The Sarky, Spiritless, and Knife-Edged Guide to Avatar
by RedRosesandMarigolds
Summary: What happens when the most bored, uncaring character in Avatar is asked to review the show? For her, Hell, but for us, hilarity! Mai is kidnapped and forced to watch the show against her will, then instructed to review each episode. She doesn't give one, and thus does her best to be as defiant as she can. Mai, you're up! Rated for terribly unladylike language and implications.
1. Prologue

**This, people, is my first attempt at an all-out crackfic, set vaguely a short time after the series' end. It is not supposed to be intended as anything more than a little light entertainment, in hopes of preventing such ennui as displayed by our commentator. So, let us sit back and enjoy the best TV show ever aired in the company of the driest, least-easily-entertained character to be shown on it. Oh, and I don't own Avatar. Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing crappy fanfic for it on a crappy Kindle Fire tablet.**

* * *

All was quiet as three masked figures slipped through the Fire Nation Capital, in quick succession from each other as they hid at each street corner. At last, they saw the towering spires of the Royal Palace, and a quick nod passed through the group. Silent as mouse-cats, they dashed out to where the vast palace grounds began, but instead of throwing themselves over the wall, they turned off and headed towards the unguarded manor next to it, huge but yet looking like a tiny cottage next to the overwhelming decadence of the palace. Another nod rippled between them, and the three ninjas went in for the attack.

Mai loved the night. She often did not retire until one or two o' clock in the morning, preferring to stand by her bedroom window and gaze out into the dark sky, sometimes allowing her eyes to drift towards the palace. On this particular night, she was lounging against the window-frame, savouring one of her last nights of complete freedom before her parents returned from Omashu with a cup of tea in her hand. Her quick eyes caught sight of a flash of movement just outside her window, and she froze for a minute, trying to figure out what it was. _Probably just a wolf-cat._ Her gaze was drawn once more to the palace opposite, thinking of her boyfriend and wondering what he could be doing. Was he taking a bath, perhaps? If so, _wouldn't_ she like to join him! Mai lost herself in contemplation of what pleasurable activities this situation could lead to for about a minute, before she heard footsteps outside her bedroom door, and _really_ froze this time.

A forceful kick to the door sent it flying off its hinges and three black-clad figures burst into the room. Mai did not stop to ask questions and instead reached into her sleeve, her tea sent hurtling to the floor, and pulled out a knife. Within seconds, one of the three was pinned to the wall just to the left of the door. The other two, taking note of their companion's fate, managed to slip round behind her, and Mai shrieked frantically as a gag was pulled over her seldom-opened mouth. Whipping around, she struggled free of her captors' grasp and managed to give one a solid kick to the stomach, sending them flying into a wall. She pulled out a knife to see to the last one, but, to her horror, the one she had kicked staggered to their feet, and suddenly she found herself battling two at once. But unbeknownst to her, the one pinned to the wall had been slowly working at their bonds, and managed, with one hand, to reach for their belt, bring a shooter to their mouth, and blow. Mai felt something sharp hit her squarely between her shoulder-blades, and barely had time to register her vision blurring at the edges before she fell to the floor, transported to a place of strange dreams and even stranger laws of gravity.

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When Mai woke up, she was in a brightly-lit, cheerfully furnished room, lying on what appeared to be a softer, poofier version of a sofa. She sat up. There was a gentleman sitting in one of the other seats. Mai instinctively reached for a knife, and with a pang of horror, found that they had been taken.

"Hello, Mai." smiled the gentleman. "I trust you slept well?"

Mai gave him one of her usual deadpan stares. "Where am I?"

The man smiled. "In an underground bunker. You are in a different world, now. Think of it as Our World, as opposed to Your World."

"Who are you, and why have you brought me here?" Mai cut to the chase, giving away her rage by way of folding her arms across her chest and letting out an irritated huff.

He shrugged. "Don't ask me. It's not important who I am. What is important is why we brought you here." He snapped his fingers and a gentleman swept in, carrying a small, but flimsy-looking box, which he placed in her captor's hand, hovering next to him. Mai saw that the box depicted two glowing eyes and a downwards arrow, which seemed to shine in the light. Mai couldn't figure out how the room was lit anyway; it didn't seem to be with fire or crystals. Nonetheless, the man looked ready to speak, and so his captive listened.

"This," He gestured over to a tall, black piece of furniture that stood just opposite where Mai was sitting, "is called a television. It's moving pictures - it can show us something that's happening now, something that happened a while ago, or even," He tapped the box, "something that never happened at all. Got that?"

Mai hadn't, but she didn't care sufficiently and so allowed her captor to continue.

" _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ is widely considered to be one of the greatest TV shows ever to air. It had ingenious plots, relatably complex characters, and animation better than a lot of shows whose style they were imitating. It's set in your world, and it's about Avatar Aang and the last nine months of the Hundred-Year War. Which brings us to why we've brought you here. You are going to watch it, and after each episode - each twenty-minute section - you are going to stand _just here_ ," He took her hand and stood her in front of a bookcase, on which a small, strange-looking box with an attachment that looked like a telescope pointing towards her rested at about eye-level, "and tell us what you think of it. Understand?"

Mai frowned, but nodded sullenly.

"Any questions?"

"Yes. Why would I do this for you?"

"Do you see a way out?"

Mai's frown deepened into a scowl and she sat back down on the sofa. She still didn't know how this "television" thing was supposed to work, but she reasoned that she was about to find out. The man who had been hovering in the background came forward and extracted a smaller box from the one he held, which he opened and removed a flat, shiny disc. Squatting down before the television, he pressed something and a small tray opened. He placed the disc on the tray and then pressed the symbol again, sending the disc and the tray back in. At once, the television sprung to life, and Mai was shown a brightly-coloured picture. The man who had been questioning her picked up a strange-looking stick thing, the top surface of which was covered in bumps, and pointed it at the television, pressing some of the bumps. Mai watched as the picture changed, and then, when he seemed satisfied, he handed the stick to her. "When you're ready to start," he told her, "just press this button here. When you reach the end of an episode, press this one, and then give your review." He headed for the door. "For a more polished video, you'll be the only one in the room. Happy watching, Mai. Call us if you need anything!"

And he was gone.

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 **OK, so that was the prologue. If this comes across as rushed, or just complete shit, in my time, it's twenty past five in the morning, and it's taken me four hours to do this, including frequent distractions such as reading other people's fanfic and googling silly shit like "How to Annoy People", and so both the quality of the writing and my crudeness of wording can be blamed on that. Also, the fact that I lost quite a bit due to unreliable Wi-Fi. That pissed me off, and makes me more likely to half-arse the bit I lost. In the next chapter, a disgruntled Mai will explain context: bending, the Asian influence, et cetera. See you there.**


	2. Context

"So...context.

We'll start with the context of this... _review._ I've spent what feels like four hours trying to get out of this wretched bunker, and there's no way out, and no knives in sight. I've been left a briefing sheet which explains, _in about a million words_ , what I was told before they locked me in. It also mentions that I will be answering your so-called "reviews", which some of you will be good enough to leave. They aren't letting me out for at least three days, so please do review, so that I'll have something else to do as opposed to thinking about this _excruciating_ boredom. I've tried everything I can think of trying to get out, and I can't be bothered to just sit here for three days, so I decided "what the fuck?"

 _Avatar: The Last Airbender_ is set in my world, which is divided up into four nations, each named after an element. The two Water Tribes are located at the poles, and the Southerners live in tents and eat seaweed, penguin blubber, fish, and other marine things. They have a very primitive, self-sufficient existence, and there are hardly any of them since all their men went to fight in the war - I'll get to that later, OK? - they live in a place where nothing grows, all their Waterbenders - I'll get to that, too - have been taken, and probably most of them have died off from the unbelievable _cold_! Seriously, how do people live like this?

More to my taste - but not much more - is the Northern Water Tribe. They are closer to civilisation, as they live in a city. Mind you, they still haven't grasped the complicated notion of stone or wood, and so built their structures out of, would you believe it, _ice_. I wonder at these people sometimes. Why don't they all just go somewhere warmer? Oh, yes, because they can't figure out how to make a boat that'll make it more than a foot. In fairness - you hear that! I must be _really_ bored! - to them, their city does have a lot of canals. In fact, I don't think they have _any_ streets at all. They have a chief who apparently doesn't dress like he just woke up, unlike the Southern chief (who I have to be careful about mouthing off about because I'm supposed to be friends with his kids now), and they used to have a princess as well, but she turned into the moon or some crazy convoluted shit like that. I don't know, I haven't watched the damned thing yet.

Then, there are the Air Nomads. They don't really have a nation, being, well, _nomads_ and all, but they don't seem to roam about as much as their name suggests as they have four temples, imaginatively named the Northern Air Temple, the Southern Air Temple, the Eastern Air Temple, and the Western Air Temple. They were all monks, and believed that all life is sacred. They flew about on gliders and each one had a giant, evil-smelling Sky Bison. When they mastered Airbending - I'll get to it, I'll get to it! - they all had conspicuous blue arrow tattoos carved into them, because hey, what's a better way to celebrate someone's great achievement than to force them to undergo extreme pain for an extended length of time? Other than that, I don't know shit about them as I've just found out that everything I was taught about them in school was a lie. Thanks a lot, Madame Satoshi. Thank you for wasting eight hours of my every week. That was just such _fun._

Next, we have the Earth Kingdom. It's the biggest of the four nations, and it is basically one ginormous green stain on our map. Apart from the big cities, like the creepy capital Ba Sing Se and that shithole Omashu, it's made up of tiny little villages full of stone cottages inhabited by people dressed in rags with no washing habits to speak of. Its army is mediocre at best, and I could probably take out a battalion or two _if I still had my knives_. I've been to Ba Sing Se, and it is, without a doubt, the worst place I have ever visited, even worse than Omashu. (Trust me, that's saying something.) It is divided up into three "rings". The Upper is where they put all the high-class people, the ones who can afford some proper luxury. The Middle Ring is where they stick those people that can afford a bathtub and also have quite nice houses with things like, you know, _books_ , and maybe a servant or two. The Lower Ring is where they keep everyone else. Not a nice place. The streets are full of poo and everyone steals everything. Zuko's been there, and when I saw him, he smelled like a komodo rhino farted into a trash pile. Trust me. I got my nose close enough to tell. (And, do you know, it's really hard to muster the willpower to stick your tongue out when the person whose throat you intend to ram it down is giving off a stink so powerful you could smell it down the corridor. So, I'm not a fan of the Lower Ring.) Oh, yes, and there's also the super-creepy Dai Li, who "keep an eye on everything". They kidnap, brainwash, and probably also assassinate anyone who makes one step out of line. And all because There Is No War In Ba Sing Se.

Which just leaves us with the Fire Nation. We are an island nation which has a lot of volcanoes in it. The national colours are red, gold, and sometimes black or warm brown (guess which colour's my favourite). Our food tends to be spicy - for those who can afford it, of course - and we kneel on cushions to eat it. We have a strong military force equipped with advanced destroyers, airships, and tanks, as well as the occasional fancy machine such as a ginormous drill or a train that doesn't need a track. We have, like the Earth Kingdom, a large class divide and screw over some lower-class towns, leaving them in poverty, but most of our lower class is doing better than the Earth Kingdom's. The upper classes live in big houses, with the daughters of families learning to embroider, play numerous stringed instruments, sit still and be quiet (what fun...), or twist hair up into one of those needlessly complicated hairstyles around one of those needlessly flowery headdresses. What a fine life we lead.

In these four nations, some people have the needless ability to control their nation's element. This is known as "bending". It's a mental thing, but it has physical movements as well, mostly with their hands. Firebending is very harsh, and concentrates on sharp jabs and punches. It is also possible to shoot fire from your feet as well as the palm of your hand. Firebenders are the only benders who can actually conjure their element, which means it is impossible to isolate a Firebender from bendables - although I don't suppose Airbenders have too much trouble, either - and so makes them more difficult to defeat in battle. This is what I had to recite in class at school, except for the bit about Airbenders, because that is apparently why _noble_ fire is the superior element. Airbending is very light and quick, and Airbenders are very difficult to fight, as they are pretty much everywhere at any given time. I've only actually seen one Airbender and, if you want to know why, perhaps _the title of the show_ would be worth a look, so again, I can't tell you too much about them. Waterbending is very graceful and smooth. Waterbenders can look very calm in battle - although the one I know seems to have a temper like a platypus-bear with a sore head - and is mostly about turning their defence into their offence - which explains why said Waterbender is always on the defensive - and using their opponent's strength against them. Earthbending is solid and unmoving, and mostly involves crudely punching and kicking things. Most of them are very muscular, and none of them look very smart. Some people in each nation can bend, but others can't, and so these people have to exercise their brains and find another way to live their lives - such as learning to throw knives perfectly every time _only to have them confiscated because your kidnappers are sneaky bastards who don't admit defeat when they find themselves pinned to a wall like everybody else_. Anyhow, this means there probably ought to be a higher intelligence rate among non-benders. It's perfectly normal to be a bender or a non-bender, and they live side-by-side, often in the same family. I don't know how someone is born a bender, but it seems to be pretty random. It would be just _perfect_ if my baby brother became a Firebender, because there really aren't any other ways he can be better than me. It would give my mother something else to moon over in letters to her friends, anyway.

The reason there aren't any Airbenders left is because of the Hundred-Year War. This was the bright idea of my boyfriend's great-grandfather, Fire Lord Sozin. His idea was that, because he thought that the Fire Nation was the best of the four, he would "share this greatness with the rest of the world" and start colonising the Earth Kingdom. The Great Comet, later re-named Sozin's Comet, rolled around, giving the Firebenders a heap more power - the power of a thousand Suns and all that. Sozin rather kindly used this power to wipe out the Air Nomads so that the next Avatar - the keeper of balance between all four nations - couldn't be born among them. As I later learned, the Avatar was already twelve years old, and had frozen himself in a ball of ice in order to escape drowning - admittedly a nasty way to go - while running away from his problems like the good, dutiful Avatar he was. One hundred years of fighting and bloodshed followed, with the Fire Nation slowly taking over more and more of the Earth Kingdom and beating back the Water Tribes. In school, children had to repeat facts about great Fire Nation victories, which may or may not have been true, and we all had to learn about how much greater the Fire Nation was and how we, as noble girls, could all contribute to "The Great March of Civilisation" by having lots of sons to serve in the army. Exciting stuff. (In fact, considering the fact that we had the sons-for-the-army talk about once a week, I hope that all my kids are girls. It's about time we had a female Fire Lord that wasn't on the verge of being carted off to a lunatic asylum anyway.)

Another thing I'm apparently supposed to explain is the animals in my world. They are, apparently, hybrids of the animals in your world. I would know this, only I'm being kept in a bunker without my knives. I would like to know how they found them all anyway - did they strip-search me? Because if so, they are not leaving this place with all their limbs. For example, a koala-sheep is a cross between a koala and a sheep. We do get the occasional non-hybrid animal, though. I would know - I've spent way too large a portion of my fifteen years of life cleaning up bear shit. But I suppose we'll get to that later. I'd say more, but this information is completely pointless. Idiots. No-one should give anyone any kind of power unless they first prove themselves capable of managing a complete thought.

I'm Mai. I'm fifteen years old and I was born to a noble family in the Fire Nation. I used to be friends with the princess, but I'm not any more because she's a psychotic, psychopathic raving lunatic. What a friend. She used to enjoy setting me on fire, if I remember that right. I find my life boring, and so would you if your parents told you to be quiet even when you hadn't said anything and to sit still when you hadn't moved, and otherwise ignored you and pretended that they never made the mistake that you are. I'm a non-bender, but I like to throw knives, which I keep in my sleeves - or I would if they hadn't been confiscated - and I can now hit pretty much anything. I mostly use it to pin people to the wall when they annoy me. I also have a younger brother called Tomohiro, who my mum calls "Tom-Tom' because she thinks it's sweet. He's what they - my parents - really wanted. A son. Everything he does is sweet and perfect, whereas I'm just that sour-faced failure who wears black all the time and doesn't have a nice word to say about anything. If you hear me mention my boyfriend, I'm talking about Fire Lord Zuko. I've known him since I was eight, and what started life as a blushing crush pretty much evolved into a genuine desire to stick my tongue down his throat. Which evolved into love. I suppose. He's an idiot who never knows what he's doing and the only things he's good at are fucking everything up and fucking me. Wait. Did I just say that out loud? Anyway, I hate him, but I'm all he has, so I suppose I just have to take it. Anyway, I'm just going to get this thing over with before I say something else I don't want everyone to know."

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 **You may have noticed - at least, I hope you have - that this chapter contains no narration. This will be the case with all future chapters. I'm leaving it all to Mai. There's also that nice review button you can hit, and you can ask Mai anything you like. Anything. She will answer. Probably. You'll get a mention and a thank-you, anyway. Help to do the impossible and alleviate Mai's boredom! So, leave a review, leave a favorite, leave a fruit tart (Mai will appreciate it) and see you for the first episode review.**


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